quotations about Happiness
Regard this world as the place to sow seed for eternity, and after taking such a portion from this world as may give you strength to take the journey to the other world, turn away from whatever is more than this. Realize that the future world is the place for enjoyment and happiness which is eternal, and the land to behold the excellence and beauty of the Lord; and make it your purpose, divine and omniscient grace assisting you, never to cease from the pursuit of them, but to secure as your prey, the phoenix of felicity and happiness.
MOHAMMED AL-GHAZZALI
The Alchemy of Happiness
Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts
I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask too much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
If thou would'st be happy, bring thy mind to thy condition, and have an indifference for more than what is sufficient.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
As to the desire for happiness, we find it is universal. That is one thing upon which all mankind are agreed.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
Happiness is the soul in peace.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, "Oh, not half bad."
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
There are many teachers who assert positions, which logically lead to pessimism. Some declare that happiness is a will-o-the-wisp ever deluding the eager grasp, and it is better not to attempt the impossible. Others see life lived under a leaden sky and on a sodden earth. They agree that to some, and under some conditions, happiness of a kind would be possible, but it is so rare a chance that it is not worth counting on ourselves becoming the fortunate exceptions. There is not enough happiness to go round. Others assert that the sure way to lose happiness is to seek it. If you aim at it at all, it must be indirectly. You may have it at the back of your mind, but you must not have your eye on it. Still another objection to the pursuit of happiness is that it is selfish. Yet everybody would admit that a world of happy human beings is an ideal worth while. How is this even to begin to be possible, if nobody is ever to try to be happy himself?
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Happiness has been so degraded by its identification with well-feeling that one can appear spiritually callous in rising to its defense. Some of the prophets who warned against the pursuit of psychological happiness have been made welcome, even if their warnings were not heeded for long. One has only to draw a line from Augustine through Luther and Pascal, to Kant and Kierkegaard, to Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth to be reminded of how much respect this dismissal has been afforded. They are heralded for their tough stance against worldliness and an unwillingness to conform to the spirit of the age. In short, they refused to be assimilated for the sake of temporal fulfillment.
DEAL WYATT HUDSON
Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction
There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You're supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mar. 1, 2012
The happiness of life, like the light of day, consists not in one brilliant flash, but in a series of mild, serene rays.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Self and Self-Management
A man may be happy anywhere that knows how to be contented.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
My friends' happiness forms part of my own.
PEDRO ALEXIS TABENSKY
Happiness: Personhood
Success is identical with happiness only on condition that we have aimed at and attained those things in life which are really worthwhile, and--if success is to be complete--the most worthwhile. Any success which does not result in happiness, in some one of its varied forms, for self or for others, is a sham.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
ROBERT ANTHONY
attributed, The Graduate's Book of Practical Wisdom
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say "I have learned" and "I have loved," you will also be able to say "I have been happy."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Rama II